Meet the N.J. tick that can turn you into a vegetarian

Jerry Dotoli has enjoyed them all for most of his 73 years with no discomfort, only pleasure.

Until last December, that is. The Ocean County man had gone to Florida for the winter, where he was beset by frequent hives accompanied by a ferocious itching “four times worse than poison ivy.”

After enduring one misdiagnosis after another, Dotoli finally learned from a blood test that he had become allergic to meat, pork and dairy – the very allergens he’d been happily ingesting nearly every day.